NOT FADE AWAY: Watch It At Home – The Tumultuous 1960s (Again) What do you do after you’ve created the seminal television drama of our time? If you’re David Chase, it seems that you take a few years off to soak in your Sopranos adulation and awards (consistently refusing to discuss the controversial ending, […]
THE BUTLER: Worth A Ticket – Superb Acting Elevates A History Lesson THE BUTLER, in its form and earnestness, recalls the days of prestige TV movies and miniseries that used to be associated with the Hallmark Hall of Fame and network sweeps periods (and which now exist only as a vestige on pay-cable, mostly […]
RED 2: Watch It At Home – Less Fizz in the Drink This Time The first RED was a disarming surprise, a rom-com action adventure about retired but very lethal spies as bubbly as it was explosive. It made almost $200M at the worldwide box office, and while that’s not quite Expendables money ($274M […]
> Or if the title were a Jeopardy answer, the question would be: what should writer/director Rodrigo Cortes have paid attention to, before he typed “The End” on his script Red Lights wouldn’t have been a festival movie even if it had been good. It’s no more than high-grade hokum (and not that high), and […]
> Sundance changed the way it kicks things off this year. Instead of a single high-profile Opening Night Film (which has almost always turned out to be a disappointment), the festival screened several smaller films. For those of us who arrived before the madness begins in earnest tomorrow, there was the chance to get Wait […]
HER: Buy A Ticket – Tetrabytes of Love From Spike Jonze HER, which was presented at the AFI Film Festival before opening in theatres next month, is the first film Spike Jonze has directed from his own original script, and although its inventiveness recalls Being John Malkovich and Adaptation., the projects on which he collaborated […]
PACIFIC RIM: Watch It At Home – Even Michael Bay Might Say “Too Much” Why isn’t PACIFIC RIM a better movie? It’s a passion project for the tremendously talented co-writer (with Travis Beacham) and director Guillermo del Toro, who’s made both the enjoyably junky Hellboy adventures and the transcendent Pan’s Labyrinth. Del Toro is […]
THE WAY, WAY BACK: Watch It At Home – Modestly Engaging Coming-Of-Age Tale THE WAY, WAY BACK is one of the last real indie hopes for a original breakout hit this summer (it was a big buy out of Sundance, a $10M purchase by Fox Searchlight, the studio behind the Sundance smash Little Miss […]